Walking on Fire
Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance
Published on 15. September 2013
288 pages
978-0-8014-6985-5 (ISBN)
Description
Haiti, long noted for poverty and repression, has a powerful and too-often-overlooked history of resistance. Women in Haiti have played a large role in changing the balance of political and social power, even as they have endured rampant and devastating state-sponsored violence, including torture, rape, abuse, illegal arrest, disappearance, and assassination.In Walking on Fire, Beverly Bell, an activist and an expert on Haitian social movements, brings together thirty-eight oral histories from a diverse group of Haitian women. The interviewees include, for example, a former prime minister, an illiterate poet, a leading feminist theologian, and a vodou dancer. Defying victim status despite gender- and state-based repression, they tell how Haiti's poor and dispossessed women have fought for their personal and collective survival.The women's powerfully moving accounts of horror and heroism can best be characterized by the Creole word istwa, which means both "story" and "history." They combine theory with case studies concerning resistance, gender, and alternative models of power. Photographs of the women who have lived through Haiti's recent past accompany their words to further personalize the interviews in Walking on Fire.
Reviews / Votes
Walking on Fire provides powerful, moving witness to the desperate struggle of these women to protest and-more important-survive. The women who speak out in the pages of Beverly Bell's book offer an eloquent portrait of a poverty that is unrelenting in its meanness.(Women's Review of Books) In this moving book on opposing tyranny and degradation, activist Bell... gives face to the numbers by providing a forum for indigenous women to speak about their lives.... An antidote to cynicism, the book not only introduces American readers to an array of courageous role models but also proves that change is possible.
(Library Journal) Rarely does the voice of Haitian women in Haiti fighting for their rights emerge so clearly to relate their own experiences, battles, and hopes....Despite the harshness of their lives, the honesty and healing potential of the women somehow rises above the unimaginable and lands at the readers' feet.
(The Haitian Times) The women Bell interviews, many of whom are veteran activists in Haiti's grassroots democracy movement, recount stories of being raped, struggling to feed their families, and being subject to political torture.... Bell does her best to balance the painful lives of the women she interviews with the recognition that under such conditions, mere daily survival of the body and the spirit takes tremendous resilience.... Perhaps one day the small acts of rebellion that Bell celebrates may help to create a movement capable of political transformation, so that the example of Haiti once again frightens the powerful of the world.
(Voice Literary Supplement) This is painful reading; it shows much suffering but also much remarkable transcendence. Bell's book vocalizes this, but its point is not merely archival. These testimonies are meant to move readers to action.
(Publishers Weekly)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Reflowable
ISBN-13
978-0-8014-6985-5 (9780801469855)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2002
Cornell University Press
€34.71
Shipment within 10-20 days
Persons
Beverly Bell is the founder and director of the Center for Economic Justice in Albuquerque, N.M. She has worked closely with the Haitian democracy and women's movements for more than two decades. Edwidge Danticat is the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, The Farming of Bones, and Krik? Krak!
Content
Foreword, by Edwidge Danticat
Preface: Beat Back the Darkness
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Women of Millet MountainPart I: Resistance in Survival
YOLANDE MEVS - My Head Burning with the Burden
ALINA "TIBEBE" CAJUSTE - A Baby Left on the Doorstep in a Rotten Basket
LOVLY JOSAPHAT - I Always Live That Hope
ROSELIE JEAN-JUSTE - A Woman Named Roselie Who Fought Back
VENANTE DUPLAN - I Don't Have the Call, I Don't Have the Response
MARIE SONIA PANTAL - SchoolPart II: Resistance as Expression
LELENNE GILLES - I'll Die with the Words on My Lips
MARCELINE YRELIBN - Singing a Woman's Misery
ALINA "TIBEBE" CAJUSTE - Getting the Poetry
YANIQUE GUITEAU DANDIN - The Struggle for Creole
GRACITA OSIAS - Chaleron's Lesson
FLORENCIA PIERRE - The Cultural Soul
MARTINE FOURCAND Expanding the Space of ExpressionPart III: Resistance for Political and Economic Change
ALERTE BELANCE - My Blood and My Breath
YANNICK ETIENNE - A Grain of Sand
CLAUDETTE PHENE - A Little Light
YOLETTE ETIENNE - Jumping over the Fire
LOUISE MONFILS - The Samaritan
VITA TELCY - Five Cans of Corn
MARIE JOSEE ST. FIRMIN - Sharing the Dream
SELITANE JOSEPH - Chunk of Gold
ROSEMIE BELVIUS - Reshuffling the CardsPart IV: Resistance for Gender Justice
LISE-MARIE DEJEAN - Minister of the Status and Rights of Women
GRACITA OSIAS - The Marriage Question
LOUISE MONPILS - Walking with My Little Coffin
CLAUDETTE WERLEIGH - Women's Business
YOLANDE MEVS - Support for the Children
YANIQUE GUITEAU DANDIN - A Country's Problems, A Woman's Problems
MARIE ]OSEE ST. FIRMIN - Deciding My Life
OLGA BENOIT - Assuming the Title "Feminist"
JOSETTE PERARD - The Carriage Is LeavingPart V: Resistance Transforming Power
CLAUDETTE WERLEIGH - Lighting Candles of Hope
MARIE SONIA DELY - Sharing the Breadfruit
LISE-MARIE DEJEAN - The People Say Jump
MYRIAM MERLET - The More People Dream
YANNICK ETIENNE - You Can't Eat Gumbo with One Finger
MYRTO CELESTIN SAUREL - Rocks in the River
KESTA OCCIDENT - A Stubborn HopeEpilogue: Resistance as Solidarity
ALERTE BELANCE - Get Up, Shake Your BodiesNotes
Glossary
For Further Research and Involvement
Bibliography
Preface: Beat Back the Darkness
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Women of Millet MountainPart I: Resistance in Survival
YOLANDE MEVS - My Head Burning with the Burden
ALINA "TIBEBE" CAJUSTE - A Baby Left on the Doorstep in a Rotten Basket
LOVLY JOSAPHAT - I Always Live That Hope
ROSELIE JEAN-JUSTE - A Woman Named Roselie Who Fought Back
VENANTE DUPLAN - I Don't Have the Call, I Don't Have the Response
MARIE SONIA PANTAL - SchoolPart II: Resistance as Expression
LELENNE GILLES - I'll Die with the Words on My Lips
MARCELINE YRELIBN - Singing a Woman's Misery
ALINA "TIBEBE" CAJUSTE - Getting the Poetry
YANIQUE GUITEAU DANDIN - The Struggle for Creole
GRACITA OSIAS - Chaleron's Lesson
FLORENCIA PIERRE - The Cultural Soul
MARTINE FOURCAND Expanding the Space of ExpressionPart III: Resistance for Political and Economic Change
ALERTE BELANCE - My Blood and My Breath
YANNICK ETIENNE - A Grain of Sand
CLAUDETTE PHENE - A Little Light
YOLETTE ETIENNE - Jumping over the Fire
LOUISE MONFILS - The Samaritan
VITA TELCY - Five Cans of Corn
MARIE JOSEE ST. FIRMIN - Sharing the Dream
SELITANE JOSEPH - Chunk of Gold
ROSEMIE BELVIUS - Reshuffling the CardsPart IV: Resistance for Gender Justice
LISE-MARIE DEJEAN - Minister of the Status and Rights of Women
GRACITA OSIAS - The Marriage Question
LOUISE MONPILS - Walking with My Little Coffin
CLAUDETTE WERLEIGH - Women's Business
YOLANDE MEVS - Support for the Children
YANIQUE GUITEAU DANDIN - A Country's Problems, A Woman's Problems
MARIE ]OSEE ST. FIRMIN - Deciding My Life
OLGA BENOIT - Assuming the Title "Feminist"
JOSETTE PERARD - The Carriage Is LeavingPart V: Resistance Transforming Power
CLAUDETTE WERLEIGH - Lighting Candles of Hope
MARIE SONIA DELY - Sharing the Breadfruit
LISE-MARIE DEJEAN - The People Say Jump
MYRIAM MERLET - The More People Dream
YANNICK ETIENNE - You Can't Eat Gumbo with One Finger
MYRTO CELESTIN SAUREL - Rocks in the River
KESTA OCCIDENT - A Stubborn HopeEpilogue: Resistance as Solidarity
ALERTE BELANCE - Get Up, Shake Your BodiesNotes
Glossary
For Further Research and Involvement
Bibliography
